Michael Fassbender: Shame Interview

Michael Fassbender On The Dark Side Of Sexual Addiction

Quick Bio

Michael Fassbender provides the same passion and emotional complexity to the role of a sex addict in Shame as he did in his award-winning role as an IRA prisoner in Hunger. Different worlds, same story: the price we pay for our choices and the dangerous and consuming journeys that we take.

There's something about Shame's main character that's different from his mates in the executive suite. He appears cool and confident and in charge. In reality, however, Brandon is out of control. He is subject to constant, urgent sexual needs. He's emotionally crippled and is low on self-esteem. The more sex he gets -- and he gets it -- the worse he feels. Soon he's breaking social, moral and ethical barriers in order to feel something again. It's a self-defeating, abusive cycle.

Ironically, Fassbender also stars in David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method as Freud, the sex analyst who breaks all the rules by carrying on an affair and getting into some pretty heavy kink. We spoke with Fassbender in Toronto, where premieres of both films set tongues wagging.

You're considered to be something of a sex symbol, so is it ironic playing someone on the wrong side of sex?

Michael Fassbender: No, because, you know, my job is to be an actor, and I try not to be a brand as much as I can. What's good for my image and all that bullsh*t doesn't interest me. I'm there to tell stories and go places that are thought-provoking and to push people and provoke questions and have audiences take this journey vicariously through this character. In order to do that, I need to go to places that such questions would seem ridiculous to me and hinder me.

No matter where Brandon's drive comes from, he behaves like a sexual predator.

MF: Well, that's the idea of when you want to bring someone to the table that's real and not in any way trying to sort of flower around the character or worry that the audience won't like him. I knew they would like him because I liked him -- because he was a guy who knew who he was. It's not like he was going about his business and damn the consequences. No, he's someone who doesn't like himself and he has a very low opinion of himself, so, therefore, he goes about abusing himself in such a way.

I wanted him to be repulsive and vulnerable and be all those things so that he would be sort of real and people would go, "God, I recognize that" or "There are elements of that in me." Maybe he's not a hundred miles from us. He is a product of our times. I wanted to embody all of that.

Brandon is so lonely.

MF: There is no relationship that he has with anybody in the story that's a healthy one -- not with his boss or his sister or any of his sexual partners. It's an isolated kind of existence he's living. The front is "Oh, here's a successful guy," and he's living right and everything's cool, but it's so far from the truth. He can't allow himself to invest in other people -- there's that danger of intimacy or emotional responsibility. It's too much for him. So when his sister hugs him, there's no place he can go to; it's not a place where he feels safe or secure. Therefore he has these physical relationships without any form of intimacy. In a moment where we think he might be able to find [intimacy] with a girl, he can't handle it. It's overwhelming and frightening for him.

What was it like exploring sexuality in A Dangerous Method and Shame?

MF: Shame was the tougher job. A Dangerous Method was two jobs beforehand, so it was fresh having some background from quite a few jobs by the time I got to Shame. But I was kind of tired, and then it was so intense in that five-week period, and I did go to these places pretty much without any masks or exterior to hide behind. So, at a certain point, I was thinking, "Ah! I'm going a little bit crazy." Then I realized that it was probably time for me to take a break soon. But both were good fun, as well, finding these characters and finding out what makes them tick and where they're coming from and all that.